Email Marketing – Why you need an Email List
If you’ve ever entered an online contest, offered your email address to an online or local store, or given the okay for a sales consultant to send you information, you’ve joined an email list. Email lists are simply the email addresses and names of people who signed up, by one of many different means, to receive emails such as electronic magazines (“e-zines”) or newsletters, electronic courses (e-courses), or product information in their inbox. We offer a free social media setup guide to people signing up to our monthly eNewsletter – it’s all the same principle.
Collecting customer and prospect contact information and keeping in touch with them on a regular basis and it is the key to any online business’s success. Here are some of the main reasons to start building your list now:
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Presence
An email list that you use regularly gives you an easy way to keep your name in front of your customers and prospects on a continual basis. By making your name top-of-mind, you’re increasing the likelihood that your customers will purchase from YOU when they’re in a position to buy.
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Connection
Say you’re a florist. Your average customer may only purchase from you a few times a year. But you continue to stay in touch with her, providing her with quality information that relates to a topic she’s interested in – holiday decorations and entertaining tips, for example. When she DOES need a flower arrangement, you’ll be the one she buys it from. Why would she spend her money with some website she’s never heard of when she knows you, her online friend who sends her useful information every week?
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Education
Some products and industries require more education before prospects are ready to purchase. Email lists offer an easy, inexpensive way to provide the information your prospects need, moving them through the learning curve, until they’re ready to buy.
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Feedback
Do your customers want your next product to be bigger or smaller than what you have now? Do they hate the background music on your website? Do they wish your software was compatible with a platform you don’t currently offer? Don’t guess — just ask them! Email lists give you a simple way to solicit feedback from the real experts – your customers themselves.
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Easy to Share
Word-of-mouth can be your best source of new business. By providing easy-to-share electronic newsletters or product information, you make it more likely that your current customers will pass the word to their friends, without incurring a minute of your time or a penny of your money.
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Revenue
Some enterprising electronic newsletter publishers make money by selling ads in their publications to complementary businesses. The larger and more targeted your audience, the higher rates you can command.
Starting, growing, and maintaining an email list of targeted subscribers is one of the most profitable things you can do to build a successful business online. Not every prospect will become a subscriber, and not every subscriber will turn into a loyal customer, but you’ll find you’re much more successful selling to your list than you are to a group of relative strangers. One thing to remember when you start out – look to the future! Think about what you will eventually want and sign on with an email marketing provider that has all the features you need now and may need in the future. Changing providers can mean losing some of your subscribers who decide not to opt back in to the new system. We use 1 Shopping Cart but there are others out there – Constant Contact and Aweber to name a few.
Provide subscribers with quality information on a topic that interests them, and they’ll gladly allow you to tell them about your products and services, knowing you’re an expert at what you do. After all, you’re providing all this great information… you must know what you’re talking about! There really is no reason to delay starting your email list.
What system are you using? What works and doesn’t – please share! We all learn from the experiences of others.
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Email marketing is quite effective in lead generation. i made a couple of affiliate sales by email marketing alone-`*
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Kathy Colaiacovo Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 9:07 am
Cameron, you are quite right. Email marketing is also a fabulous way to keep in touch with your contacts – good relationship builder.
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